The Vanishing Summer
by Lilys Eyes
Summary: What if "somewhere" really existed? OR The Jets come across a mysterious map.
1. Chapter 1

**A-rab and Baby John**

„Blood…there´s blood on my hands", Baby John whispers, holding his trembling hands out to A-rab as if he expects him to do something about it, to make it go away. A-rab grits his teeth, his fear and grief only wanting to come out as anger.

"And ya _still_ ain´t got a hanky!" he cries uselessly, throwing up his hands. For a second he feels like slapping Baby John. He didn`t want to see this, any of this. The blood on the other boy´s hand almost grotesquely incongruous. Baby John shouldn´t _have_ blood on his hands, he´s too young, too soft, too…sweet. A-rab shakes his head and swallows hard.

"C´mere," he picks up an old piece of paper from the sidewalk and angrily wipes Baby John`s hands with it until all the red is gone. They all had blood on their hands, and that wasn´t going to come off so easily, A-rab quashes the thought.

"There, better now?" he asks briskly.

Baby John`s tremulous, grateful smile makes him want to weep.

"Alright, then let´s get the hell outta here."

Without thinking, he shoves the paper in his pocket.

Baby John only nods, apparently not sure of his voice. A-rab puts a hand on his shoulder and they silently wander into the seemingly never-ending night.

**Action**

The room is hot, oppressively, stiflingly, hot. And Action is drunk, drunker than he´s ever been and yet somehow still not drunk enough. Groaning, he wriggles out of his drenched T- shirt and throws it across the room. He refuses to believe what has happened, it just couldn´t be true. Riff and Tony weren´t dead and anyone who claimed otherwise was just talking bullshit.

"Bullshit!" Action shouts at the ceiling, angrily contradicting the silence of his room.

_It´s true, it´s true, it´s true_, a voice in his head mocks viciously. He grinds his head into his pillow, trying to shut it up. Going home had been a mistake. He needed someone to talk to, someone who would tell him everything was going to be alright somehow. But everything was _not _going to be alright. Action sits up abruptly, causing the room to sway dangerously around him. Pressing a hand to his stomach, he fights the urge to throw up.

Air! He needed fresh air, not that you got that in this city. Stumbling over to the window, he rests his arms on the sill and takes a few deep, gulping breaths. When something light and soft suddenly ghosts across his hands, he jumps so hard, he almost falls on his butt. A piece of paper, dancing on the breeze. He bends to pick it up, slow like a sleepwalker. It seems to be a fragment of some kind of map. Indifferently, he lets it float to the floor.

Tottering back to his bed, he kneels to pull an old shoe box from underneath it. Hidden between broken toys and baseball cards, he finds his old rosary, a gift from his Nonna. He needed to talk to someone and maybe, for a change, _He _would listen.

**Snowboy**

Leaning against the door of his parents´ apartment, Snowboy feels like what he´d imagine being a ghost would feel like. Very light and insubstantial, with a fine tremor traveling all through his body. Pinching his cheeks as if to remind himself he still has a face, he more floats than walks into the dimly lit kitchen. Something bad has happened tonight, something really bad and yet it all seems oddly vague to him.

"Pull yourself together, dumbass," he scolds himself, balling his hands into tight fists.

His brain refuses to listen. God, what was he going to do? He needed to…he needed to eat something. Yes, that would help ground him again, he is suddenly certain. So he pulls up a chair, opens the fridge and just starts stuffing himself. Cake and apples, jam and bologna, peanut butter and lunch meat and everything else he can get his hands on.

When the fridge is empty save for a few condiments, he rests his head on his arms and cries until he starts hiccoughing. Exhausted, but feeling just a little more human, he is about to finally shut the fridge again when his gaze falls on something like a little parcel in the vegetable crisper.

A chocolate bar maybe? Snowboy feels he might still be able to eat a little chocolate. But it is just a folded piece of paper, a part of a map apparently. Confused, he drops it on the table and shuffles to his room. Slumping onto his bed, he is asleep almost as soon as his head hits the pillow.

**Tiger**

He grinds his teeth so hard he can hear it, as he strides through the deserted streets. Never before has he felt more like living up to his name. Like he could tear the entire world limb from limb. Not that it would help, even if it were possible. Nothing short of raising the dead would help this time.

But he has to do _something, _he has to find some kind of safety valve for his feelings or he really would explode. And suddenly he knows exactly what that is.

"Why, look what the cat dragged in," Diane says, tapping her bright red fingernails against the doorframe. "And I thought ya´d forgotten all about me."

He doesn´t say anything, just stares at her.

The girl heaves a long-suffering sigh. "Oh, come in then."

Shrugging off his jacket, he heads straight for the bedroom, not feeling like pretending tonight.

"Hey, ya wanna drink?" Diane calls from the kitchen.

He nods before realizing she can´t see him.

"Yeah." He flops onto the bed, listening to her putter about.

From the doorway, Diane winks at him across the rum and cokes in her hands.

"Now, let´s see if we can´t make this Tiger purr," she says with rehearsed sultriness, putting the drinks on the little bedside table.

He watches her slither out of her tight, green dress, feeling oddly detached all of a sudden.

She slowly crawls onto the bed and begins to do what, she says, no other girl does better. He closes his eyes and tries to enjoy himself. It doesn´t work.

"What, don´tcha like me no more?" Diane raises an eyebrow at him.

He rolls onto his side with a groan.

"Yeah, I like ya…that ain´t it," he says slowly.

The girl eyes him quizzically. "Then what is it?"

He tells her, everything. By the time he finishes his account, there are tears in her eyes. She looks achingly young all of a sudden and he realizes that he actually does like her, a lot.

"Oh, honey," she just says, wrapping her arms around him.

They just cuddle for a bit, eventually falling asleep holding each other tight.

When he wakes again, Diane is gone, a small note lying on her pillow.

_Fresh OJ in the fridge, love, Diane_, a bright red lipstick kiss beneath it.

He puts it in his shirt pocket, wondering if he could, if he wanted to, love Diane.

**Gee-tar**

The park isn`t safe at this time of night, he knows, knows but doesn´t care. Flying across gravel and concrete as fast as his feet will carry him, Gee-tar doesn´t care about anything. He doesn´t want to. He doesn´t want to care, or hear or see or do anything but run. Run until his legs ache and his lungs burn.

Knowing that there is no running away, not in this city, not for the likes of him, only making him run faster. _Somewhere _ain´t a place, he thinks desperately. He doesn´t want to remember that PR girl´s face or her words.

"I can kill too, because now I have hate."

His blood is thrumming in his ears as he leaps across rocks and puddles. In the end, the girl hadn´t been able to run away from hate either. Here, you didn´t have that chance, no matter what you did or who you were, somebody hated you and you hated somebody.

Here, you were born into hate, it came as easy as breathing. Or maybe even easier, he stops briefly, his hands on his knees, gasping for breath before running on again. If he could, he´d never stop again. But he is running in circles, he´ll just end up exactly where he began. Back to fighting, fighting, fighting…

A small brook cuts through the ground before him like a wound and he jumps knowing he won`t make it. Slipping on the grass, he rolls over rocks and damp earth before barreling into a tree. Dazed, he lies there for a while, just listening to his shuddering breath. Eventually he pushes himself up on his knees. Someone has pinned a piece of paper to the tree´s boll. Gee-tar squints, trying to decipher it. It´s some kind of map and he almost laughs at the irony. There was no map leading him out of here. He tears it off and puts it in his pocket anyway.

**Mouthpiece and Joyboy**

They choose seats in the back row, far away from the giggling couples. Mouthpiece, for some reason has bought popcorn and now he sits there, hugging the bucket to his chest like a teddy bear, not eating a single kernel. They didn´t care what movie was playing, anything to push away the memory of what they know they´ll never forget.

At first it even works a bit as they try to follow the action, but then the female lead suddenly gets stabbed while showering and Mouthpiece mumbles "Man, I don´t feel good…I don`t feel good at all," and they hastily make their way to the exit.

"Ya gonna puke?" Joyboy asks the green-looking Mouthpiece.

"Yeah…no…I dunno," the boy says, sitting down on the sidewalk.

Joyboy shoves his hands in his pockets and plops himself down beside him.

"Stupid movie," he says, just to say anything at all. "As if ya wouldn´t hear if somebody came into your room to stab ya…"

"Shut the hell up about people gettin´ killed!" Mouthpiece throws up his hands, sending his popcorn flying everywhere.

Joyboy releases a sigh. " Sorry." He´s feeling pretty weird too right now, almost as if he were looking at the back of his own head.

"Gawd."Mouthpiece digs his hands into his hair." What are we gonna do now?"

Joyboy releases a humorless chuckle. "What are we gonna do? Same as always, whaddaya think?"

Mouthpiece swallows hard before looking at him.

"That´s it? Same as always?"

Joyboy shrugs somewhat helplessly.

"What else? What choice do we have if we wanna hold our turf?"

Mouthpiece nods wearily. What choice did they have? He unsteadily climbs to his feet.

"Think I´m headin` home now." He moves to pick up the now mostly empty popcorn bucket.

"Alright." Joyboy rises slowly, his knees cracking.

Mouthpiece takes a few steps.

"Ya can crash on the couch if ya wanna," he says.

Good old Mouthpiece, Joyboy would never have admitted it, but the thought of being alone tonight scares the bejesus out of him.

" Thanks." He pats the other boy`s shoulder.

They trudge off in silence, sharing the rest of the popcorn until Mouthpiece suddenly stops dead in his tracks.

"What the hell? There´s a…a _map_ in my popcorn!" he says unbelieving.

**Big Deal**

_Where troubles melt like lemon drops, way above the chimney tops, that´s where you´ll find me. _Big-Deal´s mother had sometimes sung "Over the Rainbow" to him when he was a little kid, and even though he had long lost any illusions about the existence of such a place, he´d still escape to where the chimney tops sent plumes of black smoke into the skies whenever his troubles seemed to great for walls to contain them.

Sitting down in the shadow of the parapet, he pulls a small, battered notebook from his pocket. Nobody knew he owned such a book, not even the Jets. He opens it and stares at the blank page for a long time. How could he put into words what he felt right now? It seemed too big, too terrifying, as if any moment his thoughts were going to claw their way out through his skull.

But he _had_ to write something. Wiping the sweat from his face with his sleeve, he gazes across the maze of chimneys and TV antennas.

_In the sky, skeletal hands_

_Ants without hive hurry in solitary swarms_

_Fingers break before they touch._

Big Deal angrily crosses out the words again, they were trite, meaningless, pointless. Snapping the book shut, he rests his elbows on his knees. He wouldn´t find the words, not tonight, maybe never. Maybe they would be forever lodged in his throat like a poison dart. The thought frightens him.

Rising to his feet with a muffled groan, he gazes into the dark maze of streets below. In a city of over sixteen million, blood was spilled every day and every night. Every day and every night people lived and died in fear and pain, two more or less hardly mattered.

Big Deal grits his teeth, maybe this was the crux, they didn´t matter and they never would, neither dead nor alive. He takes out his notebook again and writes a single word, _help_. Tearing out the page he watches it float down into the abyss of the city. When a sudden breeze carries it up again and into his face, he actually grins at the bitter irony.

He is about to crumple the paper up in his hand, when he realizes that it isn´t the page from his notebook at all but a frayed and creased fragment of some kind of map. Big Deal shrugs a shoulder and puts it in his pocket.

**Ice**

Velma had left without him, that´s all he can think as he gazes at her standing there, whispering to Graziella, gently patting the other girl´s hair.

"Ya comin´ , Vel?" he asks, extending his hand to her.

She doesn´t meet his gaze. "I don`t think Graziella oughtta be alone tonight," she says softly.

She´s right of course, he can see the girl is trying to be strong, but it´s obvious she´s barely keeping it together.

"Okay…see ya tomorrow then," he just says, watching them walk away, arm in arm. Only Anybodys is still standing in the shadow of the wall, the look in her eyes as troubled as he feels. For a split second he has the absurd idea of asking her to come with him. She looks at him, then looks away again and he thinks she is going to say something, but she just turns around and darts past him, running into the night.

Wandering through the silent streets, Ice wonders if she too will be alone tonight. Solitude has never bothered him, sometimes he actually rather enjoyed being alone. But tonight…

He quietly climbs the stairs to his apartment. Maybe Velma had changed her mind, maybe she´d be waiting for him behind that door he thinks, knowing that she hadn´t and she wasn´t. Shrugging off his jacket, he makes a bee-line for his tiny living room.

There is an old photo album on the shelf above the TV. One of the very few things his mother had failed to take with her when she left. He picks it up and plonks himself onto a chair. Resting his chin in his hand, he slowly leafs through the album.

There are mostly pictures of his parents when they were young, smiling faces in black and white, hardly older than he is now. There are also a few of him as a child, and he watches himself grow from an infant into a boy of maybe seven. The photos stop shortly after that and Ice isn´t even sure why he wanted to look at them in the first place. They seem to depict strangers, living strange lives. Maybe he´d just wanted to remind himself that there had been a time when he hadn´t been alone.

But he also needed to remind himself of everything that hadn´t made it into the album and that, sometimes, it was better to be alone. Sighing, he is about to return the album to its shelf, when a small piece of paper flutters from between its pages. He picks it up and turns it over. A fragment of a map, it doesn´t depict any place he recognizes. He slides it under the cover again and turns on the radio, the muted cool jazz of late-night radio and nicotine once again his only companions to get him through the night.


	2. Chapter 2

It´s too hot to even move and they loiter lethargically around the drugstore. Even Action appears subdued, half-heartedly launching a few darts in the vague direction of the board. At a corner table, Big- Deal quietly despairs over a crossword puzzle, while A-rab and Tiger attempt to play chess and at the counter Gee-tar is nodding off over a rapidly warming coke.

"Michigan bridge…eight letters," Big Deal mumbles.

A-rab turns around, accidently upsetting the pieces.

"Macintosh," he offers helpfully.

Big Deal shakes his head." Nine letters."

"What the hell? Ya do that every damn time when ya know I´m gonna beat ya!" Tiger smacks the tabletop with his palm.

"Honest to goodness accident, buddy boy." A-rab raises his hands in a placating gesture. "Here, could these eyes lie to ya?" He gazes at Tiger, the very picture of innocence.

"Ya won`t be able to open those eyes for a week if ya do this ever again," Tiger scowls.

Comically wide eyed, A-rab mimes clutching pearls.

"From now on, I´m writin` every move down," Tiger says, pulling a piece of paper from his pocket.

"Fine with me, _I _ain`t got nothin´ to hide." A-rab stops arranging the pieces on the board and not so discretely eyes the paper.

Diane´s note, Tiger realizes too late.

"Aw, fresh OJ, how sweet. Hey, how come nobody ever makes _me_ fresh OJ?" A-rab whines, snatching the note.

Tiger rises from his chair, dangerously slow.

"Gimme that back right now," he growls.

A-rab grins, waves the paper over his head for a second, but then thinks better of it. Tiger´s punch was infamous.

"Alright, alright, what would I wanna keep that for anyway?" He puts the paper back on the table, upside down and for the first time Tiger notices that it´s a fragment of some kind of map. A-rab apparently has noticed it too.

"Hey, wait a minute…that looks like…," he mumbles. A small frown on his face, he pulls a crumpled shred of paper from his pocket.

"Found this in the street the other night," he says, smoothing it out and placing it on the table next to Diane´s note.

Tiger cranes his head." Huh, they´re from the same map," he says eventually. "Hey, Big- Deal, ya know where this is?" he beckons to the other boy.

Big-Deal seems almost relieved to have an excuse to abandon his crossword puzzle. He adjusts his reading glasses and studies the pieces for a moment.

"No idea," he begins," but…" He pulls another piece of paper from his pocket and puts it on the table. "Hit me in the face up on the roof," he says.

It is most definitely another piece of the same map.

"Okay, this is gettin´ weird," A-rab says, his baffled expression mirrored on the faces of the other boys.

"What is?" Action asks, unenthusiastically launching another dart.

Tiger scratches his head. "Uh, seems like we all found pieces of the same map."

An odd expression crosses Action´s face. "Ya found a map…where?" he asks, striding over to the table.

"Hit me in the face up on the roof," Big-Deal says.

"Found it in the street," A-rab adds.

"Uh, got it from someone I know," Tiger says lamely.

Action just scrutinizes the pieces for a while, chewing his lip.

"Ya know, this kinda looks like…like somethin` that flew in through my window that night." He says slowly. He didn´t have to elaborate which night.

A-rab raises his eyebrows and chuckles incredulously. "So what…someone tears up a map and every Jet finds a piece?"

Tiger shrugs. "I guess…´sides, ain`t like _every_ Jet found a piece," he says.

"Hey, Gee-tar, ya ain`t uh, found a map recently?" A-rab calls only half joking.

Gee-tar almost falls off his stool, trying to look like he absolutely had not been dozing.

"A map…why d´ya ask?" he asks suspiciously.

"´cause _we_ all did." Tiger says only.

Frowning, Gee-tar joins them at their table. He studies the fragments for a bit, before he silently pulls another piece from his pocket and puts down with the others.

"Found it in the park," he says," pinned to a tree."

"I don`t believe it!" A-rab slaps his forehead.

Tiger shakes his head and Big Deal adjusts his glasses again. Action just keeps on staring

"Okay, _that_ can´t be a coincidence," Tiger says." Can it?"

Big- Deal swallows before speaking. "Probably not," he says slowly.

A-rab chuckles nervously. "But that don`t make sense."

"Ya think the others found one of these too?" Action asks, finally tearing his gaze away from the table.

They had, each and every one of them had somehow acquired a piece of the same map. One by one they`d joined their respective fragments with the ones on the table, until Ice´s had finally completed it. Now they stood around it, silent and uncomfortable like the spectators at a freak show.

"So, anybody know where that is?" Snowboy asks eventually. Nobody does.

"That someone ya know tell ya how she got it?" Ice asks, turning to Tiger.

Tiger shakes his head." Said she couldn´t remember ever seein` it before."

"This has to mean _somethin_´, "Mouthpiece says, as frustrated and baffled as everybody feels.

"Like what?" Action asks tetchily. He would never admit it, but he wasn´t at all sure he wanted to know where that strange map had come from or why they´d found it.

"Hey, maybe Krupke`s behind this," Joyboy offers." Ya know like `buzz off and here´s your map`, or somethin` like that."

Action just rolls his eyes.

Joyboy looks a little embarrassed. "Hey, ya got a better idea?"

Action wishes he had.

"Plannin` a romantic little getaway?" Anybodys has silently snuck up behind them.

"Yeah, with your sister," A-rab says without malice, hoping the girl didn´t notice her sudden appearance made him jump just a little.

Anybodys makes a dismissive gesture. "Sorry, she ain`t qualified to work with the feebleminded. So what´s up with this, Daddy-O? Ya ain`t really goin` on holiday, are ya?" she asks, indicating at the table.

She listens intently as Ice tells her how they came into possession of the strange map, before silently poring over it for a while.

"Guess ya don`t know where that is either?" Ice asks.

Anybodys just shakes her head.

"Hey, how come ya didn´t find a piece?" A-rab says.

Anybodys swallows a reply and just shrugs, she´d been wondering that herself. If every Jet had found a piece, did that mean she wasn´t a true Jet?

The remainder of the evening brings no answers, just even more questions and frustration. Action paces up and down, Snowboy eats eight lollipops, Big- Deal stares at the map like a hypnotized rabbit and Ice smokes like a chimney before they finally decide to call it a night and head home. Only Anybodys wants to stay for a tall glass of cherry coke.

Brooding over her drink, she wishes she hadn´t lied to Ice. But she has no idea how she could have told him. "Hey, I know where that is, I´ve known it since I was a little kid," how crazy did that sound? He probably wouldn´t have believed her anyway. Although she wonders, wonders how the other Jets couldn´t have recognized it. Tony would have recognized it and that PR girl, Maria, she would have recognized it too, Anybodys is certain. Unhappy, she drains her glass and bids Doc a good night.

She almost jumps when she notices Ice standing on the corner, still smoking. Oh no, he hasn´t been waiting for her, has he? He gives her an odd look.

"So why didn`tcha tell me ya know where that map´s to?" he asks.

Anybodys has to fight hard to keep her shoulders from sagging in defeat. Was she really that easy to read? She purses her lips and awkwardly stares at her shoes.

"Dunno," she says eventually. "I guess I jus` …thought ya wouldn´t believe me if I told ya."

Ice flicks his smoke in the gutter and ambles over to her. Great, just what she needed, those eyes of his were like interrogation lamps.

"Why wouldn´t I believe ya?"

Anybodys tries to meet his gaze. "`cause…`cause it just sounds crazy."

Ice just gives her a crooked half- smile.

"It ain`t the map to Shangri- la, is it?" he says.

Anybodys shakes her head. Then she takes a deep breath and rises on to her tip- toes to whisper in his ear. Whisper the secret of the map. Until she opens her mouth, she has no idea how to tell him, but then the words just begin to tumble out and it suddenly seems so easy and so freeing to finally be able to share what she`s known for so long.

And Ice listens patiently, letting her stand so close to him she could kiss him, if she wanted to and when she finishes her account and Ice just silently gazes at her for a second, Anybodys realizes that, she just might want to. Ice releases a long breath and nods slowly. The girl was right, it _did_ sound crazy and yet he knows that it is true.

"Ya believe me, Daddy-O?" she asks so softly he can hardly hear her and he thinks there are tears shimmering in her grey eyes.

He gently squeezes her shoulder.

"I believe ya, buddy boy, I believe ya," he says.

After that night, the Jets are very quiet, quieter than they`ve ever been before. They seem to patrol their turf no more than absolutely necessary and when somebody does spot them in the streets, they appear silent and oddly preoccupied. To Schrank and Krupke that makes them only more suspicious and soon the rumor begin to spread that the Jets are planning something big.

But no one suspected or could have guessed what was really going on in that dingy basement that usually served as the Jets´ armory.

"Man, it´s so obvious once ya know," Snowboy says, holding up the now taped up map.

Anybodys smiles just a little proudly. The others may have found it, but _she´d_ taught them how to read it.

"Yeah," Action says, looking at it with something close to awe.

"And ya think…ya think it`s real?" Baby John asks cautiously. He doesn´t want to believe it unless he can be absolutely certain, the disappointment would be too much to bear.

" `course it´s real," A-rab says, putting a hand on the other boy´s shoulder, he sounds almost breathless. " Look at it and tell me ya don`t believe that."

Baby John nods slowly, an indefinable feeling rising in his chest. Of course it`s real, he just wanted to hear A-rab confirm it again.

"Man, after all what happened." Joyboy shakes his head, then he starts giggling. A giggle that soon turns into a loud, harsh laugh. He laughs and laughs until tears are streaming down his cheeks , his face an odd grimace, somewhere between hilarity , grief and rage.

Nobody looks at him until he is silent again, sitting down on an old crate and burying his face in a tattered magazine.

Nobody says anything for a long while. Eventually Gee-tar breaks the silence.

"So, we goin´ then?" he asks.

"Every Jet´s gotta decide that for himself," Ice says. "That ain`t a choice I can make for ya."

"Well, I´m outta here," Mouthpiece flicks the butt of his smoke on the floor and grinds it out with his heel.

An odd electricity suddenly seems to hum to life in all of them. Something was beginning.

"Yeah, me too," Tiger says, rising from the old car seat he´d been lounging on.

"Me three," says Gee-tar.

Nods and murmured agreements from the others soon follow. Deep down inside, they all know they can´t stay and the tension that had been hanging over them like a storm cloud seems to dissipate. This was it, the Jets were leaving.

"And what about _you,_ Daddy- O?" Anbodys asks eventually, seemingly the only one to notice that Ice has remained silent so far. " Ya ain`t stayin`, are ya?"

All eyes are suddenly on their leader.

" `fraid I can`t tell ya that yet, buddy boy," he says," that ain´t just my decision to make."

When he asks Velma, he already knows what her answer is going to be. In a way, he´s known it since she left without him that night. Maybe he shouldn´t have asked her at all and spared her the pain he knows he would cause her, but they had never lied to each other and he just couldn´t start now.

"I can´t," she just says, tears shimmering in her lovely eyes. "I got a family that loves me. I..I´ve never been alone, not like ya."

That was true and Ice had always been immensely grateful for that.

"Alright, then I ain`t leavin` either, "he says, tenderly gathering her into his arms.

The girl´s head shoots up and she looks at him like she´s never looked at him before, angry and intense.

"Oh yes, you _are_ leavin`" she says, her voice clear and strong. "You´re leavin´ `cause you gotta…and `cause I know ya wanna."

It was true, he wanted to leave but he´d stay, for her.

"If ya leave I´ll know ya´ll be safe and happy somewhere. Yeah, I´ll miss ya like crazy, but I can live with that if I hafta. But if ya stay…I know ya´ll end up like Riff and Tony, just a question of time when… and I can´t live with _that_."

He doesn´t know what to say, because he too knows that´s what would happen eventually. So he just kisses her and holds her tight, gladly letting her steal a piece of his heart forever.

"I´m gettin´ outta here, "Graziella says grimly, the moment Ice tells her about the map." If it´s the last thing I ever do, I´m gettin` outta here."

Ice had known she wouldn´t stay, just like he´d known Velma would. As tough as she tried to be, she was one of the walking wounded and she needed a place to heal, a place she´d never find in this city.

They all feel like travelers sitting on their suitcases, waiting for the train to finally pull into the station. Wandering around their turf, they seem oddly out of place already, like actors that had missed their cue to leave the stage. But there was one more thing left to do.

All over the west side, strange hand- drawn maps suddenly appear, seemingly out of nowhere. Taped to walls or lampposts, slid under doors or fluttering on the breeze. Many find them and wonder where they´re from and where they´re to, but only some can read them.

Maria only realizes she has seen them before, when that skinny, auburn- haired girl skittishly offers her one, drawn with blue and green felt tip pen on creased paper.

Maria just silently shakes her head, she doesn´t want to accept anything from that girl.

"Take it." The girl says with a strange urgency." Ya can still throw it away if ya don`t want it."

When Maria doesn´t move, she folds the paper into a little square and carefully drops it into her shopping basket before running away.

Back at her family´s apartment, she considers simply throwing it in the trash. Instead she deposits it on her dresser and goes to help her mother cook dinner. It is almost midnight when she finally unfolds the little piece of paper. When she knocks on Anita`s door to tell her its secret, she can barely stifle her tears.

Patiently, Velma waits at the window, they haven´t told her when they are going leave, maybe they hadn´t yet known themselves, but she can feel in her heart that it will be tonight. Quietly the Jets emerge from the gloom, talking softly among each other, they seem in a world of their own. Smiling gently to herself, Velma watches them as they pass.

Snowboy pretending to collapse under the weight of his old Gladstone bag, drawing grins from Mouthpiece and Big- Deal, who swiftly make as if to add their sports bags to his burden. A-rab and Baby John, walking shoulder to shoulder, wearing the same ridiculous sunglasses. Gee-tar, ambling along, deep in thought, hugging his suitcase to his chest. Tiger, hand in hand with a girl Velma has never seen before. Joyboy, swinging his bag like a little kid, almost hitting Mouthpiece in the head with it. Action, kissing the little medallion around his neck and almost dancing with overflowing energy.

And then there is Ice, flanked by Anybodys and Graziella. The little tomboy gestures excitedly, while Graziella just gazes ahead, a small wistful smile occasionally lighting up her face. But Velma only has eyes for that tall, handsome boy she knows will always own a piece of her heart. Through the tears in her eyes, she watches him stride past, his face calm, his shoulders without the tension her hands had vainly tried to chase away so often. He looks light, there is no other word for it, as if a great burden had been lifted from him. This is how she will remember him.

They turn around before they finally disappear into the dark once more, their eyes smiling and Ice raises his hand. A gesture that says not only goodbye but also we have made it, we have finally found a place where we can belong.

Kissing her fingertips, Velma raises her hand in reply and then, although she cannot hear him, she _sees_ Ice say the words neither of them had ever spoken. A sob that turns into a laugh of joy escapes her lips. "And I love you," she whispers.

Then they walk on into the night.

Velma spends many a night at her window, watching those who´d been able to discern the map´s secret follow the Jets to that Somewhere. Sometimes groups of people, sometimes just a lone figure, clutching a creased and stained piece of paper. Some of them old, but most of them young. It does Velma immense good to know they´ll be safe and they´ll be welcome where they´re going.

Maria and Anita leave hand in hand , wearing their beautiful party dresses. Their heads held high, they look strong and proud as they pass. Before the darkness swallows them, they calmly cast off their mantillas and let them flutter away on the breeze.

When the heat of summer is slowly abating, Doc comes trudging past Velma`s window, an old suitcase in his hand, a not much newer hat sitting on his head, askew. He smiles despite of the tears he wipes from his cheeks. Velma sheds a few of her own, grateful the old man will spend the rest of his days in peace and serenity. She still gazes down into the deserted streets, long after he has disappeared from sight.

_Between July and October 1960, in what New Yorkers would come to call the _Vanishing Summer_, over 400 people disappeared without a trace from the city´s west side. Spawning countless theories and inspiring several books, it remains a mystery yet to be solved._


End file.
